This one combines everything. Atheism and Skepticism combine to meet superstition, religious nonsense and plain old quackery.
Dr. Suzanne Humpheries is a “real” doctor. A Nephrologist in fact.
She also flogs quackery as if there was no goddamn tomorrow. I have repeatedly said this. The quackery lobbies have real doctors who give them credibility in their actions. Mayer Eisenstein’s a more deadly version of one but Suzanne does flog some particularly virulent nonsense. And this time it’s for the Israeli discovery of wild polio in the water bodies.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says Israel needs to saturate the environment with a bivalent live Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in the hope of ridding the country of natural wild poliovirus. If you don’t already know, wild type 1 polio virus has been detected in the sewage system in Israel, and is thought to have been brought in by a Bedouin from Egypt. Nobody is known to have had any clinical symptoms as a result, but the WHO and Israeli Ministry Of Health (MOH) believe that it may only be a matter of time before susceptible persons become paralyzed. All who have tested positive for the virus thus far, have gained immunity and are asymptomatic.
No. The WHO says that Israel should vaccinate as the wild Polio Virus is circulating indicating that someone has brought it into the community and eventually people will start falling “sick”.
Trying to gain immunity from purposefully contracting wild polio is a bad idea. You may survive. You may lose your legs to atrophy.
I made a VIDEO weeks ago suggesting that the Israeli MOH may not have thought this through rationally, and that fearful parents could end up running to both OPV and IPV vaccines, even though they have never considered vaccinating before.
I am afraid the Israeli government despite being in effect a government based on the historical existence of Judea and therefore “daft as a creation concept” are not in the practice of bringing the same religious thinking into their functioning. They would rather invest in real protection through the immune system.
It galls me that Suzanne Humpheries is a goddamn nephrologist despite thinking the human immune system functions through magic.
And if they haven’t considered vaccinating, I must ask why? We are still in the process of eliminating Polio. We haven’t done it yet because of Anti-Vaxers. The militant Muslims who kill nurses are quoting the same nonsense of Suzanne and Mike Adams. Just because they are white and wear clothes we relate to and speak a language we understand they are just as ignorant as these violent luddites.
There has been massive opposition within Israel to vaccinating with OPV. The MOH has been fumbling for answers to the opposition, contradicting itself, and misinforming parents about many issues. Even though Israel uses the injected Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), like many developed countries, a decision has been handed down to vaccinate the entire country of Israel with a two-strain, bivalent OPV.
She’s one to talk. I still remember her claims that roughly 48,000 cases of Non Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis in India are down to the polio vaccine because we called it NPAFP and just called it a day.
The OPV has a major usage plus point. It’s roll out is fast and you can create a transient boost in immunity SIMULTANEOUSLY across a huge region.
What does this mean?
Well…. Suddenly Polio runs out of hosts.
Parents are writing me every day because they feel “frightened” and “terrorized” by the WHO/MOH decision to release a live communicable vaccine virus that reverts to virulence in the recipients, and has been found to circulate in populations where it is was used, 10 to 20 years after its discontinuation (HOVI 2013, SHULMAN 2000).
Parents are writing to you because they don’t understand how vaccines work and rather than teach them the reality you would teach them bullshit. The same pregnancy test those parents probably used to confirm their pregnancies works on the principle of vaccines (How do you think anti-HCG antibodies are made in the first place?).
Ah yes. It’s the infamous OPV revert to virulence.
OPV can revert to virulence in people who drink contaminated water and who were not vaccinated and/or are immunocompromised.
So if you have Leukemia and have no immune system? Don’t take the vaccine. In fact your doctor probably won’t give it. However remember you are reliant on your fellow man being vaccinated so that there is no one around you to pass on some deadly disease. If you cannot vaccinate and the selfish people around you also do not vaccinate at some point there is a tipping point where the disease returns.
She quotes Hovi and Shulman.
It is basic medical knowledge to quote papers accurate and for the purpose the paper makes the claim. Hovi involves a SINGLE case that lasted 13 years. In fact the only thing both of these point out is that the IPV is superior to the OPV and that any country planning to halt polio vaccination would have to have a interrim period of IPV usage.
To not mention that is just ridiculously unscientific to look at a paper and quote a point from the abstract as if it’s the killer point. At no point do any of these papers suggest that the OPV or IPV are not worth using.
The questions asked of me are: What are the risks? What are the odds? What should people do to protect their children from revertant virus shedding from other children?
You vaccinated your kids so that the revertant virus has no real effects.
Literally in India every single damn case of reverting OPV has either affected the unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or people with no immune systems.
At that point common fungi become deadly diseases.
And to leverage your medical degree to flog bullshit for profit is just astoundingly bad.
Risks? They are extremely clear.
You are more likely to die falling out of a bed per year than your lifetime incidence of VAP (Vaccine Associated Polio). VAP is 1 in 1 Million. Per year? 450 Americans fall out of bed to their deaths. That is more than 1 in 1 million. STAY AWAY FROM BEDS!
Parents are rightly concerned about revertants, which are viruses that, after being made tame or attenuated, by passing them through monkey kidneys and other animal cells, revert to their former potentially neurovirulent selves. They can cause something called vaccine-associalted paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) in susceptible persons. Where paralysis from wild polio virus is very low, countries stop using OPV because the cases of polio from the vaccine exceed the cases from wild polio. At this point in time there is no indication for OPV in Israel. At this point in time the calculated number of cases of paralysis associated with wild virus is ZERO.
Monkey Kidneys? Oh you mean cultured kidney cells derived from monkey kidney.
This is an outright falsehood.
Paralysis associated with Wild Polio had around 700 cases a few years ago. It doesn’t mean polio is rare, it means we immunised so much that polio is not common.
Suzanne demands children ACTUALLY contract polio and are hospitalised before she thinks we should vaccinate. The mere presence of wild polio in the water is an indication for vaccination. What’s the point of vaccinating after children start falling sick?
WHO/MOH say that if you give your child the OPV now, they will be protected from revertants, because if everyone does it, herd immunity will prevent problems. I would like to know how they support that statement, given the fact that revertants occur most frequently after the first OPV dose, rather than subsequent ones, and that the problem of reversion is inescapable.
The reverted OPV mainly affects the unvaccinated and immunocompromised.
Will Israel ever be able to stop more import and export of wild virus with OPV? Wild virus is found in fully vaccinated populations. In Madagascar, in 1999 Dr. Andrianarivelo REPORTED wild polio virus in well immunized persons. They said it replicated asymptomatically in children given 3 doses of Sabin vaccine (trivalent OPV) at least 5 mos before the testing. This has very important implications for the hope of world wide polio extinction.
Because you can become a carrier of polio in the same way that you can be one of typhoid?
OPV isn’t given just to protect a child from getting infected with polio virus. So why are they really giving OPV? It’s given to put competing virus into the gut to interfere with the wild virus and revertant vaccine viruses, AND to put massive amounts of interfering polio virus into the environment and sewage system to try to slow down, or stop the wild virus.
The systematic use of the OPV and IPV has all but eliminated polio from the world. There are just a few hundred cases a year at this point and almost exclusively in anti-vax communities. Suzanne thinks that Polio just vanished politely or that we magically stopped polio tests from detecting polio or any number of other conspiracy moves.
Why a mass vaccination campaign in a country that has NO clinical paralysis? Could it be that any crack in the effort towards worldwide polio eradication has to be attacked full force JUST to try to meet a goal of eradication of wild polio, as problems with revertant OPV plague countries who have used it, and wild virus keeps showing up? Is this really about saving face for the polio eradication effort that has missed its goal numerous times, and now has a rather embarrassing track record in India, with Indian doctors now protesting use of OPV in that country? Have a look at THIS VIDEO and pay attention to what Dr Puliyel says.
Indian doctors are protesting the use of OPV in India?
Someone’s telling porkies. Dr. Puliyel’s stance is faulty because the reason for the rise of AFP is due to better classification of disease and better testing. Prior to this all AFP cases were treated as Polio. To be classed as NPAFP (Non Polio) your samples should test negative for polio antigens.
The increase is transferring cases from Polio to NPAFP through better testing.
What if the world became aware of the fact that there are many major problems with the OPV, and there have been significant failures of IPV? Poliovirus associated paralysis is such a low-incidence disease, with so many variables relating to the environment and the person, that doing good studies to calculate risk are probably impossible.
Really?
In 1980 there were 500,000 cases of Polio in the world. 500,000 Paralysed people.
In 2012 there were around 200 cases.
Failure? The IPV and OPV are almost single handedly responsible for the improvement. If we relied on the quackery that Suzanne flogs you would not have seen a fall.
This vaccination campaign is a win/win situation for the MOH, WHO and vaccinationists world wide, because it gets the needle into the child and breaks down the parents’ resistance. And if their IPV vaccinated child gets provocation polio, from getting an injection at the time the child is incubating (known as provocation polio) any circulating virulent polio virus, who will care? MOH will just say their kid was the unlucky one, or that they should have vaccinated before now.
The WHO killed of smallpox using vaccines and spend billions each year improving the lives of people.
This is the problem. An allegedly educated Doctor is telling people that the WHO and Ministry of Health are bad and that instead they should use untried and untested methods or worse, plain useless methods to defend against deadly and permanently disabling disorders.
Suzanne Humphries cannot be a Nephrologist without being able to explain Angiotensin inhibitors or Diuretics which have side effects too. What the hell? Does she actually refuse to actually prescribe real medicines for renal issues because of side effects? What on earth does her prescribing practice look like if she fears a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of severe symptoms?
Peanuts are deadlier than the OPV, does she ban those?
So what are nonvaccinating parents to do?
First, is to fully realize that the society we live in reads lots of words on paper, and listens to words in the media, most of which are fiction. It is easy to be duped and not realize what is fiction, especially when fear takes hold. Often, what is classified as “news” is carefully written or fictitious, with a goal to achieve an “end.” That is exactly what’s happening in Israel right now. The people who are “lost” may be lost because they have no core convictions about what they believe, either naturally, or spiritually. They got even more lost by “going with the flow” like dead fish floating out to the ocean. Everyone else was floating out to the ocean, so that’s the right way.
Yes. I agree with this statement.
Suzanne Humphries has not uttered a single word of evidence based medicine in this entire article. This is nothing but a travesty. It is quackery under the blessing of a doctor.
Your core convictions may be yours but that doesn’t make them right. No matter how much you truly believe that vaccines don’t protect you from disease you are incorrect. It’s the same as thinking that humans didn’t evolve. Your convictions don’t make them true.
Non-vaccinators can be as proficient at going with the flow and not understanding what they don’t understand, as the provaccine are.
Those who are lost have a choice right now. They can remain powerless, frightened, stunned and filled with doubt. Those people will end up like weeds growing on a rooftop when the hot east wind blasts through.
Again, the anti-vax portray vaccination as some sort of disempowering choice.
That’s like saying “SMOKE! What are you? A conformist!”.
It tries to portray the average anti-vax as powerful, brave, decisive and sure of their actions when in reality they are ignorant of the science and mechanism and outright incorrect. Suzanne flogs an idea that absolute ignorance of a topic is a valid and equal standpoint for decision making. And not only that, Suzanne flogs incorrect information so what we see isn’t ignorance but the sort of ignorance you get when a person thinks what he knows is the gospel truth.
The other choice, and the one I recommend, because the odds of flourishing are so much greater (and the most common question I get is about beating the odds), is to ditch the fear by whatever means necessary. Whomever does this, learns the truth, and figures out how to cultivate health in their families, will have the best chance of sending roots deep into the ground, and trees that produce the best fruit — for generations. Those who are able to do this will stand the best odds of thriving in this period of environmental saturation with OPV (which will likely continue for years after the OPV campaign is finished). And their children will be healthier and more disease-resistant in general. What vaccine does that? None. Does fear EVER accomplish that? Never.
Why wear a seatbelt? Do you fear crashing or love driving?
A solid conviction basis is essential. What can you confidently commit your lives to? The fear of “what if something goes wrong?” or “the knowing that you are doing all you can do to keep your belief out of the fear campaign and your child disease-resistant?”
Oh good! Medical advice? This I will point out is her logic.
1) How prepared are you now, to face up to the possibility of any sickness or disease? What do you do every day to strengthen your child? Continuing good health is what everyone wants, but how are you going to achieve it? Who are you going to listen to?
Do you have a mechanical ventilator at home? Is your house friendly to crutches? I like this notion that you can somehow strengthen your competent immune system through eating magic food and doing special things that have literally no effect on how the human immune system functions.
And yes who are you going to listen to? The quacks and purveyors of non-scientific chicanery or the people who try and test and learn so much about how you work.
I know a man so good with neurology that just by History and a knee hammer he can predict the location of a stroke lesion. The skills of doctors are real and honed by practice.
2) Where does your faith lie? With the medical system, with your own philosophy on health, with God? Do you have convictions that will not be compromised regardless of what strategies, pressures and arguments are brought to bear on you? Are you able to verbalize them simply with confidence and clarity? If you are not convinced yourself, how can you make an informed choice and stand by it?
Ah yes. God. Just when you think Suzanne cannot sink any lower she calls on religious objection. Why?
Because wailing on religious objection in Israel will get you called an anti-semite? Because it’s the best excuse? I believe that an irrational sky god wants me to trust in his protection from diseases that he created?
How the hell are you making an informed choice by the invocation of a god? I am sorry? I refuse to vaccinate because I fear that I will no longer be capable of pleasing the forces of nature? One’s an entire understanding of human biology and it’s defects through meticulous scientific exploration and the other is trying to plead with a thunderstorm.
I don’t believe in any gods. I use “gods” because there are more than one. Why should we consider Yahweh’s existence to be more factual than Thor’s or Shiva’s?
And here is the thing. You must be sure of your ignorance to argue it! If you aren’t 100% convinced that magic water works then how will it work? And by informed you mean informed by quacks rather than science.
Medicine doesn’t require you to believe in it. You don’t have to worship metronidazole to make it kill worms. You don’t have to believe in diuretics. Your state of mind helps with survival but the medicine does the work.
3) What is your decision, to vaccinate or not, based on? What is your fear based on? Pressure and/or smooth talking health “professionals”; facts; a “gut feeling”; a “faith” that won’t let you down?
Your gut feeling is no match for real honest education.
Your gut feeling may say that planes shouldn’t fly but they DO FLY. Gut feelings? Really? That’s what Suzanne is encouraging? Does she really think engineers work on gut feeling? Or scientific principle? It may offend you that you are merely a machine that can be understood, a chemical reaction that can be changed, but that’s the truth no matter what your gut says.
Think with your brain, not your bowels.
4) When you make your decision, are you prepared to accept responsibility for it, whatever the outcome? Or will you want to look around for scapegoats if something goes wrong – someone or something to blame?
Oh yes. See the thing is if a child should fall ill or die to something preventable, Suzanne will be the last person to take responsibility even if she is at fault.
Your doctor puts his job on the line with every decision and action. If you take Suzanne’s advice and it goes bad? You can’t do anything. You have to live with the consequences knowing that you made the mistake.
If you are unwilling to make a well-informed decision, then you have to allow someone else to make it for you. If you delegate your responsibility to another person — like me or the MOH, are you prepared to accept the outcomes, without apportioning blame, if they are not what you want?
To the anti-vax well informed means “knowing vaccines didn’t stop Smallpox” and not “knowing how the human immune system functions”.
If you will be looking for scapegoats, then I say vaccinate because at least if something goes wrong, you will have the support of those in the medical system, who will otherwise condemn you in your hour of need, should you need them.
Oh really? If you drove your car without a seatbelt and injured your child we would judge you for your action. We have told you why you should wear the belt. If you didn’t then what do you expect us to do? Fix your child up so you can go on being stupid? We cannot cure human stupidity. We told people to wear seatbelts and they refused. Why? They weren’t bad drivers! So we made it the law. We saw a fall in deaths.
In your hour of need, we will see you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
However if you did something stupid and you expect the medical staff to tell you that your decision was somehow the work of enlightened thought then you should hire a quack. That way no matter what your decision is perfect!
The matter of convictions is extremely important, because it must provide an anchor to cope with life’s uncertainties.
Many people ask me what I would do if I were them. I cannot tell you to vaccinate or not. But I can give you advice on improving your child’s resistance. If I were in Israel today:
Except you are telling people to not vaccinate. You just hide behind legalese to make sure that if some poor sod gets paralysed because of your advice, you can just say that you were presenting a neutral choice.
1) Younger children, as in nursery school age, or kindergarten, if you are going to be worried about them, keep them home until January or February, but the viruses will be circulating for months to years to come, at lower levels.
Because all families can afford to keep kids with nannies or stay at home to care for them? And fear mongering much? I fear for my children’s safety so I am going to refuse a vaccine that will keep them safe and instead keep them at home.
2) I would dose myself and my child daily with sodium ascorbate. Adults at least 2000 mg per day, children vary depending on weight and state of health. And I would read and understand the many functions of vitamin C, why people are so deficient, and why it helps with poliomyelitis whether viral or toxin-mediated so that I knew why I was doing it.
Vitamin C? No Seriously?
This is pure bullshit. That you can somehow fight Polio through the consumption of lemonade? And this is terrible advice. Vitamin C’s RDA is just 90 mg per day. The MAXIMUM recommended dose is 2000 mg per day and it’s usually given in patients with scurvy.
Doses above 2000 mg are just excreted out in urine.
Taking above 2000 mg results in nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, flushing of the face, headache, fatigue and disturbed sleep. Suzanne is straight up giving advice that will make you sick. Vitamin C is needed by the immune system but simply flooding the system with hundreds of times the necessary dose isn’t going to fight disease as opposed to causing a few issues. Interestingly enough? Macro doses of vitamin C would cause diarrhoea making Polio easier to spread.
3) The role of good nutrition cannot be overstated in any disease, but with polio, there is plenty of evidence that diet makes a huge difference in susceptibility to neurovirulence. For instance a diet high inISOFLAVONES can significantly LIMIT THE NEUROVIRULENCE of polio virus. My choice in that list would be tempeh because it is fermented and gives probiotics, and is also very high in isoflavones. Unfermented soy is probably not healthy due to undesirable glandular effects. Diets low in selenium are also known to enhance the neurovirulence of other enteroviruses as was found out in Cuba during an epidemic of paralysis that was originally thought to be polio, but later found to be coxsackie virus. Why isn’t the MOH telling people specifics about nurition?
I quote “Both isoflavenes worked equally well against Sabin 2 and most of the highly-diverged, Israeli, aVDPV(2)s isolates. Thus, functionality of the hydrophobic pocket may be unaffected by selective pressures exerted during persistent poliovirus infections. Amino acid substitutions at sites remote from the drug-binding pocket and adjacent to a neurovirulence attenuation site may influence flavanoid antiviral activity, and neurovirulence, respectively.”
Pro-biotics defend against diarrhoea by competitive inhibition. If you are healthy you are just throwing bacteria onto more bacteria and not really doing anything. Pro-biotics are good for combining with antibiotics because they maintain intestinal flora avoiding GIT complications of antibiotics.
They don’t fight polio.
And I repeat. This is still less effective than the polio vaccine since here ENTIRE idea is based on a single paper.
And as bad advice goes this is BAD. By all indications isoflavones in megadoses are inhibitors of the human immune system. All their other benefits are highly contentious with studies showing two opposing things. The claims made by Suzanne are totally unscientific and biased. Most of the scientific community is suggesting that research is needed and that evidence of large doses seem to cause lymphocytopaenia which is a fancy word for “Low Lymphocyte Count” which is fancy words for “Low Immunity”.
Oh right! Papers!
People are not recommending that we reduce the immune systems of every child in Israel while polio is knocking about based on an in-vitro experiment. The fact that a doctor thinks in-vitro = in-vivo is frightening. In vitro is used to test whether something would work on the target or not. You also have to test in vivo and the claims made by flavones by quacks is highly contentious medically.
4) I would avoid antibiotics, injections or drugs of any kind which impact the immune system like acetaminophen, processed food, environmental toxins — like the plague, as they will weaken the gut immunity, which is about 70% or more of your body’s total immunity.
Acetaminophen (Paracetemol) does not affect your immune system. If you are a doctor who thinks that the most common anti-pyretic and anti-inflammatory drug currently used is causing our immune systems harm then you don’t understand how it works. Processed food spreads polio? REALLY?
And I am sorry? 70% of your total immunity is in your gut? Oh. That explains why AIDS patients are so healthy! It’s clearly their gut immunity that’s affected the most. No… it’s their specific immune system or the ability to produce antibodies.
Our specific immune system is the most powerful part of our immune system. The non-specific stuff is fast but not as powerful. And if our gut immune system was so “powerful” we would have no foreign bacteria in it.
5) I would avoid unnecessary surgery, like tonsillectomy while polio virus is circulating because these were known to be associated with paralytic poliomyelitis during the big polio epidemics in USA and UK. And because tonsillectomy removes the gatekeepers of the lung and gut’s immune system. There are better ways to manage large, chronically infected tonsils.
The indications for tonsil dissection and removal are for chronic tonsillitis. Many patients cease to talk and if untreated will result in Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media which is a perforative disease of the ear. If untreated it can form a Quinsy or an abscess and sleep apnoea.
And these are the minor ones. Yes. A hole in your ear is fixable.
It also progresses to scarlet fever, rheumatic fever and glomerulonephritis.
Or you know. You can vaccinate and not have to worry about your child wandering around with a hole in their ear or with a severe cough. Oh and hypertrophic changes can affect their voices later in life or even cause breathing complications like sleep apnoea which is stress on your body.
And it’s a common disease that is covered by the Polio vaccine that wasn’t as widespread in the USA in the 1950s. With good coverage of the vaccine the procedure stopped spreading Polio.
6) I would take probiotics and eat quantities of fermented food as appropriate for age. Eat lots of fruit, vegetables, good quality protein, and – if faith plays any part in your life, look up all the scripture on God’s ability to heal whomever asked him to.
Then look at all the people that particular god fails to miraculously heal if they are poor and in a third world nation. The gods seem more likely to heal people who have access to the height, depth and breadth of medical science. Call me a cynic but individuals who put their faith in what I consider to be an imaginary entity are deluded.
The literature is filled with people who’s faith in the gods resulted in deaths and injuries. To do this is to not take responsibility for your own healthcare. To invoke a god as a reason to not vaccinate is the heights of moral repugnance.
Science doesn’t know everything otherwise it would stop. Religion has been trying to get science to stop for the past 2000 years. Reading scripture on faith healing doesn’t make it true.
7) I would do everything possible to rid myself of all fear. Fear is an immunosuppressant, raises cortisol levels, and will do nothing but fulfill MOH and WHO’s prophesy. In the USA in the 1950s, at the peak of the fear campaigns here, psychosocially-induced symptoms resembling polio, but being nothing more than hysteria, caused a lot of problems in hospitals. Fear could be the difference between you or your child infected with any polio virus becoming symptomatic or not.
No.
Polio affects children in a very specific way. Hysteria induced diseases don’t function that way. You can’t stop breathing if you believe you have polio.
And to portray herself as a voice of reason rather than a fear mongerer is a terrible testimony to the warped ideology of the anti-vax. Polio is a dangerous and crippling disease. There are children in India who grew up in braces. Suzanne portrays the disease as harmless without invoking the banks of iron lungs that saved children’s lives in the 1950s and which thankfully are no longer needed due to the vaccine.
If your child get’s sick or even you do (Remember Polio is deadlier to adults) then it’s not Suzanne’s anti-vax that netted you in trouble. You clearly didn’t pray hard enough or you didn’t believe in Vitamin C or you were too scared. What nonsense.
8) A diet low in sugar has been shown to reduce the incidence of poliomyelitis in the past (SANDLER 1951, Van Meer 1992 ). Sugar is also another immunosuppressant, competes with vitamin C uptake in cells, and feeds intestinal toxin-secreting bacteria and feeds yeast.
No it’s not. Just eat a damn balanced diet. Feeds Intestinal Toxin Secreting Bacteria? Our ENTIRE bacterial flora in our gut including the “toxin secreting ones” are reliant on the food we eat. Our gut flora is for the most part benign and useful.
And no. This is just moronic. Indians have had severe calorie restricted diets with incredibly low sugar levels for centuries and had one of the highest polio rates out there prior to vaccination.
Neither link actually supports her theory. The first one by Sandler actually claims that LOW blood sugar is a risk for severity of polio infection and the second one goes on about metabolite sugars and is also hosted on the Vaccine Research Council which is quackery incarnate.
9) Consider that vaccinology is a religious branch of medicine. There are other examples of medicine where doctors “believe” with all their heart in something that the establishment later admits was wrong, or that those doctors actually have no first hand knowledge about. Vaccinology is a form of civic religion. Doctors who support the many vaccines to infants and children, think that healthy children should take the (supposedly) small risk to their health and lives, in order to protect society and those who cannot get vaccinated. The church of vaccination does not involve any trustworthy God. It is ruled by fear, money, and “facts” that shift in the sand.
Ah yes.
To make this claim is an outright lie. In order to be a doctor and in order to be a nephrologist one has to understand the human immune system. The method by which vaccines work is the same method by which Rh -ve mothers safely deliver Rh +ve babies.
I will spare you the photographs, it is not a happy disease. Basically? The mother’s antibodies actively destroy’s foetal blood cells causing anaemia and fluid accumulation causing a bloated foetus that may die without aid of transfusion. And all it needs is a single shot to keep the baby safe.
Suzanne doesn’t understand the human immune system which makes her status as a doctor even more worrying. Does the AMA not check if doctors are teaching quackery? Vaccines are not religious. They are based on the scientific understanding of the immune system. Pathogens are “eaten” by phagocytes and are broken down into component parts. These are then presented to antibody producing cells which produce different antibodies. When the right antibody matches this, that cell clones itself on a war footing and begins to produce antibodies that specifically target those structural components of the pathogen causing the pathogens to fall out of blood by clumping and makes it easier for the phagocytes to kill them.
To point out how effective this process is? Let’s look at the clumping macroscopically in blood testing. Blood matching needs to be done to avoid the same mechanism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVut3FPlZQI
The Eldon Card is pre-impregnated with antibodies. Anti-A, Anti-B, and Anti Rh. The last’s the control and has no antibodies. Blood taken is heparinised so doesn’t clot.
The blood contains antigens A, B and Rh. So the antibodies that are in the card react with those causing the clumping seen.
Suzanne doesn’t think this happens.
And if you think Suzanne isn’t paid for her bullshit and is doing this out of the kindness of her heart then think again. There is big money in anti-vax. They charge for speaking, they charge for consultations and they charge for “treatments” that don’t do anything.
The money in vaccination? I am sorry, we need to put food on our tables. Some of us chose to do so in ethical ways and not flog incorrect science and harm the lives of children across the globe. There is money in medicine because amateur doctor is a word that should strike fear in your hearts. It takes a lot of time and money and ffort to be a doctor and adequate recompensation is required.
You wouldn’t dream of hiring a plumber and not paying him so why do people think it’s acceptable that I shouldn’t earn anything?
Oh right! Because the anti-vax would rather live believe that their quacks are doing so out of the kindness of their hearts and not to flog shaken water as cures at exorbitant mark ups.
As for trustworthy gods? Prayer has never stopped polio or any disease. At no point has the invocation of any off the so called real gods stopped or halted the spread of any disease. It’s always been science. Praying to a god is like trying to reason with unicorns. You are praying to a non-existent being while doctors, nurses, technicians and pharmacists do all the work.
How are you any different from those “primitives” we used to gawk at and mock during our more colonial years? Oh isn’t it amusing! They think we are gods and our planes are magic! Suzanne flogs a cargo cult except with the “magic” as a villain rather than an understandable scientific phenomenon.
Medicine is based on evidence. Suzanne’s quackery is just incorrect.
Where is your religious conviction? Does it lie within the church of fear, or with vaccination’s civic religion, or do you believe in the integrity of the human constitution to deal with disease when supported properly? You don’t need religion or spirituality, in my opinion, in order to thwart the damaging fear campaign. But you do need to divert your attention somewhere else. Anywhere else. And to have your own solid convictions that the collective fear cannot alter. Fear does indeed yield a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Why do you wear a seatbelt?
Because you fear car crashes! You can never experience the true pleasure of life fearing car crashes! Does it lie with the church of fear and orthopaedics and neurology’s civic religion? Or do you believe in the integrity of the human constitution to deal with head injuries when properly supported by a diet of macrodoses of Kale of and Selenium? You need to divert your attention away from this issue!
Just as wearing a seatbelt isn’t a fear of driving but a safety precaution. Vaccination is not a fear of life but a precaution.
And you should fear polio. Polio was feared because of what it could do and because people saw what it could do. It affected their friends, their families and their loved ones. They got to see it rob children of their child hoods. They got to see it cripple children and kill grown adults. They got to see their kids interred in the iron lung. They got to smile to keep their kids spirits up while all they felt was real terror at a disease that struck down children in such a brutal fashion seemingly at random.
But we killed it. The men who made the Polio Vaccine could have been billionaires. They never leveraged their creation for profit. They gave away their research for the benefit of all mankind.
We may as well patent the Sun. This was selflessness and a work of absolute humanity. They asked for nothing.
And there is a specific irony here considering we are discussing Israel.
Both Sabin and Salk were Jewish. The so called “Chosen people” were more willing to trust in the achievements of humanity than blind faith that the gods of their choice will come save them.
Maybe they thought god helped those who helped themselves. Maybe they were more agnostic or even atheist. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is they realised that faith in god doesn’t matter so much as actual science.
You can pray that the monsters that live under the bed never come out or you can bring a torch and exorcise them. The difference between praying to the dark, fearing it’s unknown retribution and fire.
What makes the difference between those who are exposed to the most virulent polio viruses and have no symptoms at all, and those who become paralyzed? It is the innate immune system(RANCANIELLO 2006) that a vaccine doesn’t have much affect upon, but vitamin C, a healthy diet, and a low stress level can make a world of difference for. There is plenty of evidence that a low interferon level is a major determinant of viral virulence, including for attenuated strains. Interferon is poorly manufactured in low vitamin C states. This means that those who are vitamin C deficient will have a higher susceptibility even to the attenuated strains ( Lancaster 2011 ). So keep the vitamin C stores up in order to remain unsusceptible to viral invasion.
Your body can only process so much Vitamin C. If Suzanne actually paid attention in class she would know this. We are apes and so cannot produce vitamin C at will because we eat fruits quite regularly that provide us with the Vit C that we need. Above a certain point and it’s just pointless. We just urinate the excess out. What Suzanne proposes would be to eat an amount of Vitamin C that would cause an osmotic imbalance and diarrhoea.
In Suzanne’s mind we are all vitamin C deficient when in reality, as long as you eat fruits every day you shouldn’t ever have to fear the dreaded ravages of vit C deficiency. The miraculous anti-infection properties of Vit C megadoses is simply unfounded. It is a pure placebo effect.
Why then all the hype and fear? Why is the medical profession phobic about vitamin C even though there is no known toxic dose, and no death ever reported from it? Could it be an issue of patent rights, which nobody can claim? Could it be that vitamin C is preventive and therapeutic for so many diseases, that the pharmaceutical industry could have to close down buildings, if vitamin C was ever religiously used by doctors? Could it be that most toxin-producing, viral, autoimmune, allergic, and infectious diseases could be managed with no or less prescription drugs, if vitamin C was a regular part of medical practice, for which doctors received education?
Because if you eat too much you shit your pants and it doesn’t change the way it works.
Patent rights? Oh my dear.
If you came to me and said that you have bleeding gums and I found out that you had a vit C deficiency, I would GIVE you FREE OF COST TO YOU a Vitamin C tablet strip and say “take this” and “eat some fruits”.
Vit C megadose tablets would be Suzanne’s prescription. Let’s repeat that. One of us would treat you for free and the other would place you on a lifetime regimen of unnecessarily high doses of Vitamin C that would probably only cause you to be way way more regular in the loo.
If your problem is constipation then I suggest eating more roughage rather than relying on the osmotic properties of Vit C.
To not know the side effect of hypervitaminosis of Vit C is a tragedy. Eating that much Vit C will turn your pee into a cure for Scurvy since it is cleared by the kidneys.
For religious Jews, and the Messianic Jews, I have a message for you regarding vaccination.
God gave Moses core principles on Mt. Sinai that are held in high esteem by Jews the world over. The Israeli MOH may not esteem God’s principles, but I don’t believe they ever wear out. Neither do they need continuous revision. In fact, it turned out that God’s hygienic recommendations were based in science even though humans had yet to discover the science that proved God right.
*COUGH*
Yahweh, a god that is believed to exist by the Jewish and Christian faith and who is also technically Allah. The core principles of this god has lead to countless suffering the world over as Christians and Jews fought over who’s version of god is the godliest and the religions of peace killed millions trying to prove that their gods were the most kind and loving.
This god also gave Moses principles of how to keep slaves. Let’s just say that Yahweh hasn’t been updated yet for a more civilised age. Suzanne’s argument falls here.
If Suzanne claims that the divine principles of her god do not ever change then the divinely dictated genocides, rape and slavery are perfectly moral.
God’s hygenic recommendations involved throwing out people who had skin diseases and sacrificing goats to stop the spread of disease. It also is kind of amusing. For all of god’s hygenic recommendations there isn’t a single one about boiling the water and construction of hygenic toilets. Plenty of things about not eating shelfish, stoning gays and keeping slaves though.
God could have instructed Moses how to inoculate the Israelites in the desert when the diseases came upon them. If you take note of the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you’ll see that there were very specific guidelines handed down on everything from worship of God to disease management, with warnings as to what would happen if those guidelines were ignored.
Yes. You just got kicked out of the tribe to wander around until you died. Sucks to be you. GG.
Actually.
Vaccination probably predates Mosaic Law. Hindus as we know do have a god of “Smallpox” and variolation was practiced in the ancient era here. We don’t quite know when the practice exactly started but the evidence points to around 1000 BC.
Lest we forget Suzanne, my old religion is older than the allegedly “True” faith off the the Jews. It’s why I am deeply suspicious of all religions because “religions have risen and fallen” while Hinduism still stands to this day. And variolation was a Hindu religious practice. Ironically when vaccination came about and the mechanism was discovered, the religious variolation fell out of use across India. And even more amusingly variolation was also practiced in the west. It’s believed to have been taken by by Marco Polo who popularised it as a protective measure against a disease that was killing 30 to 50% of it’s infected in a near constant plague.
No I am afraid that if you bring up Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy you would have to defend the fact that Yahweh is ethically immoral as an entity if you blindly assume all laws of his were absolute gospel. It is a screed of racism, homophobia and sexism mired in ignorance and to flog it as a reasonable alternative to how the world works is just idiocy.
It’s simple. You take your Bibles and your Torah and I will take my medicine and you can take a single leper and I will take ten. In a year we will see who’s lepers are cured and who’s aren’t.
To invoke the fear of god as a reason to not vaccinate is just vile. It is the enforcement of suffering for the fear of insulting a mythical entity. It is just sad that Suzanne would even dare to say such a moronic thing since under the same laws she quoted she is nothing but property and only slightly better off than a slave or a cow.
The Israelites had highly skilled metal smiths and very sophisticated craftsmen and oil production. They had access to all the tools that Edward Jenner used to invent the smallpox vaccine, yet vaccination or inoculation of any sort, was never part of God’s instruction to Moses or the people of Israel, despite archeological evidence that polio and smallpox existed in Egypt at that time.
For the same reason that Israelites didn’t boil their water or defeat the Romans using their army of tanks, guns and jet fighters. The notion that the historical Israelites were some sort of global power is laughable and that they were the absolute acme of human achievement after all we have is just laughably stupid.
For Messianic Jews, the New Testament has many scriptures, which further reinforce the Jewish perspective and add a more expansive dimension to your study. If the Word of God has a part in your decision making process, then there are plenty of scriptures which are relevant to both religious Jews and Messianic Jews.
I have little understanding of Islamic religious tenets, therefore cannot comment in depth. However Islamic experts have written about the scriptural basis for vaccine refusal. See embedded links in this ARTICLE for more information.
Yes and some of the people who heard that decided to kill healthcare workers.
The only places where Polio still exists are predominantly Muslim areas due to the murders of healthcare workers. To laud their actions is just tragic. Polio would have been eliminated earlier if not for the actions of Muslim Anti-Vax.
A parent’s duty to their family (and to God if he is part of their lifestyle), is to make an informed choice based on real scientific facts, and whatever core convictions are important in your lives. No person ever makes a decision based on facts alone. Why? Because even “facts” are not always facts, and the most important things often cannot be measured.
Except we can measure life expectancy, illness, disability hours and costs.
For me, knowing both sides, I have no fear or doubt, but I cannot convey my roots to you. You must grow your own, and know that roots that are filled with fear will never provide life.
No really. This is just harmful advice. Through and through. It invokes every single trope of anti-vax from conspiracy to the invocation of the gods.
And it’s advice that will harm kids.